Classics Series: Invisible Man

The Book Case

ABC News

Fiction, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.7 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a feverishly paced, lyrical portrait of an unnamed African American man in the 1930’s. Hauntingly beautiful and raw, this book changed how Americans think about race. Immediately popular and the winner of the National Book Award in 1953, Ralph Ellison’s classic does not fit neatly in any literature genre (is it satire? Is it fiction? Is it historical fiction?). We sit down with two professors from Ellison’s alma mater, Tuskegee University, Dr. Zanice Bond and Dr. Caroline Gebhard to discuss Ellison’s legacy, and the legacy of his most famous work. Join us. Find books mentioned on The Book Case: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/shop/story/book-case-podcast-reading-list-118433302 Books mentioned in this week's episode: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison edited by John F. Callahan The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen Post Bellem, Pre Harlem: African American Literature and Culture 1877-1919 by Barbara McCaskill and Caroline Gebhard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Quignores.
0:02.0	Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old soldier,
0:05.0	vanishes while on duty at an Army base in Texas.
0:09.0	Her family demands answers.
0:12.0	How can she go missing on a military base?
0:14.0	That's too ridiculous.
0:16.0	The search goes on for months.
0:19.0	Where is Vanessa? And a dark story starts to unfold.
0:25.6	She told her family that she was being sexually harassed
0:29.6	and wasn't reporting it out of fear of retribution and retaliation.
0:34.6	What investigators finally uncover is horrifying.
0:40.0	Find out how one soldier, a beloved sister and daughter, ignited a movement and sparked
0:46.5	a reckoning in the U.S. military.
0:50.0	Listen to Vanished.
0:51.7	What happened to Vanessa?
0:53.6	A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Listen now,
0:58.1	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the bookcase. It is our fourth edition of the classics edition of the bookcase. So I feel like we shouldn't start with our catchy tune. We should start with like violin or like, you know, some sort of a string quartet that's, you know, the pretentious music. You pull up a chair. It's time for the masterpiece collection with Kate Gibson and...
1:28.1	Charlie Gibson. Yes. That's me. That's me. I was going to throw to you eventually. I thought
1:32.6	you'd be expecting it, but whatever. Well, I was thinking the way you introduced it, that Alistair
1:37.2	Cook should be sitting in a chair with Masterpiece Theater. But that's so long ago. I'm not sure anybody
1:43.3	remembers it. Well, and neither one of us owns a cravat and neither one of us owns a pipe. And, but that's so long ago. I'm not sure anybody remembers it. Well, and neither one of us owns a
1:45.0	cravat and neither one of us owns a pipe. But anyway, welcome to the fourth classics edition
	...

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